Researching Creative Economies in Africa: Seminars Series 2024-2025

The fifth seminar of our series focuses on Afrobeats with Mopelolade O. Ogunbowale is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Africana and American Studies, University at Buffalo.
Afrobeats’ rise to global prominence is inspiring knowledge production across several disciplines in the academy. There is growing body of scholarship within the fields of gender studies, literature, musicology and sociology accounting for Afrobeats’ history, globalization, sonic innovations, embodied practices, gender and sexual politics. Despite these groundbreaking efforts, existing scholarship continues to struggles with providing a holistic conceptualization or a “working definition” for Afrobeats that is beyond its sonic composition and stylistic innovations. Without a doubt, extant literature account for the genres’ West African and Black Atlantic historical and musical roots and to a lesser extent, its embodied, gendered and performance practices. Yet, the question of what is or what constitutes Afrobeats remains marginally explored in existing literature. In this paper, I offer useful interventions into these discourses by providing four ways of thinking through Afrobeats, a larger-than-life Afro-Atlantic music form that is slowly gaining scholarly interest and attention. By conceptualizing Afrobeats as fusion music, a dance and fashion movement with a countercultural gender and sexual regime, this paper attempts to provide a “working definition” and a foundational framework for through Afrobeats music
Mopelolade O. Ogunbowale is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Africana and American Studies, University at Buffalo where she teaches and conducts research in Afro-Atlantic popular music, religions, feminist and urban studies. Her book project, The Spirit is the Music: Osun’s Aesthetic Manifestations in Reggae-Dancehall Music reads the rhythm and resistance politics of Konto (a reggae-dancehall styled music genre produced in Ajegunle, Lagos) as representative of the creativity, rebelliousness and feminist resistance of Osun (an Afro-Atlantic Goddess synonymous with creation, fluidity, benevolence and malevolence).

Afrobeats’ rise to global prominence is inspiring knowledge production across several disciplines in the academy. There is growing body of scholarship within the fields of gender studies, literature, musicology and sociology accounting for Afrobeats’ history, globalization, sonic innovations, embodied practices, gender and sexual politics. Despite these groundbreaking efforts, existing scholarship continues to struggles with providing a holistic conceptualization or a “working definition” for Afrobeats that is beyond its sonic composition and stylistic innovations. Without a doubt, extant literature account for the genres’ West African and Black Atlantic historical and musical roots and to a lesser extent, its embodied, gendered and performance practices. Yet, the question of what is or what constitutes Afrobeats remains marginally explored in existing literature. In this paper, I offer useful interventions into these discourses by providing four ways of thinking through Afrobeats, a larger-than-life Afro-Atlantic music form that is slowly gaining scholarly interest and attention. By conceptualizing Afrobeats as fusion music, a dance and fashion movement with a countercultural gender and sexual regime, this paper attempts to provide a “working definition” and a foundational framework for through Afrobeats music
Mopelolade O. Ogunbowale is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Africana and American Studies, University at Buffalo where she teaches and conducts research in Afro-Atlantic popular music, religions, feminist and urban studies. Her book project, The Spirit is the Music: Osun’s Aesthetic Manifestations in Reggae-Dancehall Music reads the rhythm and resistance politics of Konto (a reggae-dancehall styled music genre produced in Ajegunle, Lagos) as representative of the creativity, rebelliousness and feminist resistance of Osun (an Afro-Atlantic Goddess synonymous with creation, fluidity, benevolence and malevolence).

Synopsis: The Nigerian film industry, Nollywood, has experienced significant transformations, fuelled by rising international interest, increased investment, and evolving distribution channels. In previous studies (Ezepue 2020a, 2020b) I have queried how transformations leading to class/standard separations and displacement could mean a possible gentrification of the industry. Rather than the traditional definition of the concept, I adopted gentrification as a neologism and hence, a metaphor to examine and understand changes in Nollywood production, distribution and consumption. I revisit deductions from these studies based on recent changes that have further reshaped the industry. Beyond the regenerating traits discussed in the papers, I include in this current exploration the import of growing folklore-inspired narratives and the dual force (symbol of resistance and subtle conduit) they may be lending to the gentrification discourse. Is folklore resurgence fostering cultural continuity and market expansion or inadvertently aligning with gentrifying trends which reshape and commercialize traditional storytelling? Through an analysis of contemporary industry shifts, I further explore my curiosities around a possible gentrification of Nollywood, including an evaluation of the regenerative value of folklore adaptations in the industry.

Ezinne Ezepue, a lecturer of film studies at the University of Nigeria, is currently a postdoctoral researcher of African storytelling at the Internationale Filmschule (ifs), Köln. Her research, funded by the Alexander von Humboldt, is focused on African folktale adaptation. Ezepue hopes to develop a toolkit for adapting folktales into contemporary narratives that will address social problems, unseat stereotypes about Africa and promote positive identity.
She holds a BA Theatre & Film from the University of Nigeria, a MA Film & TV from University of Birmingham and a PhD in Media Studies from Birmingham City University, United Kingdom. Before her research interest expanded to African cinema and storytelling, Ezepue researched on the Nigerian film industry, Nollywood, on which she is published in both books and journals.https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ezinne-Ezepue/research
References
Ezepue, E. (2020a) The New Nollywood: Professionalization or Gentrification of Cultural Industry. Sage Open. 10(3):1-10. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244020940994.
Ezepue, E. (2020b) Gentrification in Media Spaces: Nollywood in Perspective. Cogent Arts & Humanities. 7(1):1-12. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2020.1849971.

Synopsis: Africa’s arts and cultural wealth, which is immensely rich, can make a significant contribution to the continents progress.  Yet, as the United Nations Development Programme puts it, Africa’s share of the global creative economy represents less than 1 per cent of Africa’s Gross Domestic Product, which, as of 2023, was around $3 trillion.  Why is that the case?  One way to change this picture is to promote meaningful trade in Africa’s creative products in the framework of economic diversification.  Along those lines, this seminar will explore questions such as the following: How can Africa boost its trade in creative services using the World Trade Organization’s Four Modes of Supply?  How can the African Continental Free Trade Area fully expand Africa’s creative trade?  What are the best ways to preserve Africa’s cultural output?  And finally, since the arts’ contribution is beyond monetary reward, in what ways can the social contribution of trade in African creative output be better promoted?

The seminar will be chaired by Prof. Jen Snowball (Rhodes University)

Patrick Kabanda
Patrick Kabanda is a Juilliard-trained organist and a Fletcher-trained international affairs professional. He received Juilliard’s William Schuman Prize for outstanding achievement and leadership in music in 2003, and from 2012 to 2013 he was a Charles Francis Adams Scholar at The Fletcher School. Besides concertizing and lecturing worldwide, he has taught at Phillips Academy, consulted for the World Bank’s Office of the Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, and contributed to the World Development Report 2016 and UNDP’s Human Development Report 2015. He was awarded the 2013 Presidential Award for Citizenship and Public Service from Tufts University, Massachusetts.

Locating African Cultural Agency in the Global Digital Economy: The Case of Music Platform Insider Activists. While academic literature commonly denounces the corporate takeover, or recolonization, of African cultural industries associated with digital capitalism, African music stakeholders widely enact digital platforms as political vehicles to be seized upon for resistance against global marginalization. The past few years have witnessed a significant evolution in platforms’ intermediary function—from the Chinese-owned Boomplay and American startup Audiomack that dominate the continent’s music streaming market, to the GAFA’s newly aggressive strategy in Africa—they have emerged as actors of African music industries. Moving beyond the academic focus on data colonialism and the reproduction of hegemonies through algorithmic bias, this presentation foregrounds the self-identified “African” agents who steer these corporations and the symbolic, economic, and affective practices that they mediate in order to account for the hopes and political stakes invested into platform capitalism from the continent.

Jaana Serres is a postdoctoral researcher in media, cultural industries, and society at the University of Groningen. From 2018 to 2021, she was the Ioma Evans‐Pritchard scholar in the social anthropology of Africa at Oxford University, where she completed her PhD on the “Africa to the world” movement through the lens of the Nigerian music industry. Prior to her academic career, Jaana practiced law in New York, Paris and London, where she advised multilateral organizations, African governments, and multinational corporations. 

Imaginaries of platform entrepreneurship: techno-optimism and subversion in Ghanaian filmmaking Do platforms offer a level playing field to hitherto marginalized filmmakers, such as African filmmakers? Are these platforms a space where anything is possible? According to techno optimist imaginaries—imaginaries commonly propagated by Silicon Valley—the answer is yes. But such imaginaries of digital reach, growth, and prosperity must be rigorously interrogated. In this presentation that is precisely what I will do through the case of filmmakers in Ghana. I will show that platforms are taken up techno-optimistically by filmmakers in Ghana, but that this is only part of the story. Equally, filmmakers critique platforms and reflect carefully on the skills and access needed to benefit from them. Even more powerfully, they subvert universalizing imaginaries through the creation of distinctly Ghanaian alternatives.

Robin Steedman is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Creative Industries in Africa at Copenhagen Business School. She is interested in global creative and cultural industries, and in questions of diversity and inequality in media production, distribution, and viewership. Her work has been published in journals, such as Poetics, Information, Communication & Society, and Environment and Planning A. Her first book, Creative Hustling: Women Making and Distributing Films from Nairobi, was recently published by The MIT Press.